Progressives blow smoke on sensible solutions

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FILE – In this Oct. 22, 2018 file photo, visitors try out a pen-like “heat-not-burn” device at an IQOS store at Ginza in Tokyo. On Tuesday, April 30, 2019, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it will allow Philip Morris International to sell the cigarette alternative that heats tobacco without burning it. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

Thanks to new technology from Philip Morris, where there are smokers there’s not necessarily fire. But if there are Massachusetts liberals around, there will always be stupidity.

Last week Philip Morris International’s CEO Andre Calantzopoulos was at the Boston Wharf hotel talking about their new “heat-not-burn” IQOS product that just received FDA approval. His argument is that people are going to smoke for the foreseeable future, and so the smart move is to create new technologies that are “sufficiently good at re-creating the smoking experience to convince smokers to switch … but not so close to the cigarette that you still have too high levels of toxins.”

In a world with 1.1 billion smokers who bought more than 5 trillion cigarettes last year, it’s an argument that makes sense.

Not everyone agrees. Anti-tobacco activists fought to keep IQOS out of the U.S. In 2017, a group of 123 anti-smoking organizations sent PMI a letter demanding the company simply stop making cigarettes — period.

Calantzopoulos calls that view childish and compares it to the debate over climate change. “You can have the belief that people will just stop using fossil fuels and spend your time demonizing the oil companies; or you can find some logical midway accepting that people will engage — probably less, but still a lot — and do something about it, rather than talking ideology.”

Unfortunately, he was in Boston: All ideology, all the time.

The irony of living among Massachusetts progressives is that we see first-hand they have absolutely no interest in making “progress.” The graduation-speech cliche is that we shouldn’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good. The American left, alas, has declared “good” Public Enemy No. 1.

Why is Massachusetts still shipping in liquefied natural gas from Putin’s Russia on diesel-powered ships? Gas pumped out from environmentally sensitive areas in the Arctic? Why does New England have to buy electricity from coal-fired power plants during times of extreme weather, instead of power from far-cleaner natural gas?

Because like the anti-tobacco tyrants who support cigarette bans, enviro-kooks insist that we embrace wind and solar immediately — despite the fact that they currently generate less than 10 percent of our electrical power.

Natural gas is good — cheap, reliable and it emits far less CO2 than coal. But it’s not perfect. And so it’s the enemy.

How is fewer smokers a bad thing? How are lower carbon emissions a problem? Only when progressives push their “my way or the highway” politics, ignoring the fact that Americans are totally fine taking “the highway” option.

“You can always take the approach that people should not be doing something, and if your ideological position is they should not (smoke) and you stick to this, you can spend your entire life hoping that the people will stop, and you can keep advocating for it. But it will not happen,” Calantzopoulos told me on Friday.

“I think we have to look at the future and stop being selfish. We need to think about the people who smoke today.”

A lovely sentiment, but entirely lost on Boston liberals, who care far more about patting themselves on the back than actually improving health outcomes.

They proved it when they fought to keep CVS from opening Minute Clinics in the city because, as Mayor Tom Menino said at the time, “Allowing retailers to make money off of sick people is wrong.” (He said this about a pharmacy chain.)

They proved it again when they banned the city’s drug stores from selling cigarettes, which didn’t stop a single smoker from lighting up, but chased thousands of them out of pharmacies and into liquor stores to buy their smokes. Because who wants smokers surrounded by medicines and health professionals when there’s a store full of liquor and lottery tickets across the street?

Human beings are amazing creatures. We can create cigarettes that don’t burn and turn dinosaur residue into the energy backbone of an economic system that’s lifted billions out of poverty.

But there’s still one problem we can’t fix:

Stupid.

Michael Graham is a regular contributor to the Boston Herald. Follow him at IAmMGraham on Twitter.